Posts Tagged ‘Between the Buried and Me

I am so excited for Record Store Day this year. What is Record Store Day you ask? Why does it make April 16th infinitely better than any other day of the year for Vinyl lovers? Take it away Mr. Homme.
So many great bands are putting out fantastic platters of wax for music lovers of all persuasions. The list of special releases is simply staggering. I’m already fairly certain which records are must haves for me.

1. Between the Buried and Me – The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues
A Proggy Death Metal EP that we’ve told you about before, this marks BTBAM’s first release with Metal Blade after jumping ship from leading independent douchers Victory Records.

2. Mastodon – Live at the Aragon Vinyl/DVD
Live Mastodon Music, Live Mastodon Video, Trippy Companion video to Crack the Skye. The only way this package could be better is if they gave you an 8th and papers.

As we consider ourselves, I find music to be instrumental to self discovery and actualization. This track by Between the Buried and Me explores how little we understand the riddle of our human brain and the consciousness caged within it. It is integral to our understanding of how I believe Sin comes to exist in the world and why a set period of reflection such as Lent is integral to all human experience.

Diligence; the conscious and daily reflection that just as this earthly form has a beginning it also must have an end. With each moment that our outer shell deteriorates and decays we must strive to bring meaning and purpose to ourselves through self understanding and satisfying the needs of others and ourselves. Our bodies and minds are fulfilled through diligence, through achievement, to deny this is to live in constant death and blindness of meaninglessness. Diligence requires constant thought and reflection, to understand that what we do is achieving our goals. And this is a tradition that every Abrahamic culture has instituted be it through the period from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur, Ramadan or in the case of Christian culture, Lent.

The concept of Lent as is taught in our parochial schools when we are young is one of giving up. And this in and of itself is not a bad thought. By distancing ourselves from that which our mind guiltily enjoys we feel we have bettered our self. However this commitment is easy to break and cast aside. Giving up TV, smoking, and other trivial things also rarely gets to the heart of chronic discrepancies we have between our rationalized wants and the actions we take. These discrepancies are what we can consider Sin, those habitual actions we take which disagree with what we truly wish to do. Considering my own life, I recognize a habit of procrastination which stems from my youth and I feel has constantly drained the potential of my life. Thus during this time of Lent I wish to instead challenge myself to activate my potential through a closer focus on what my body needs to perform at it’s best. Complete denial of the flesh often drives us into negative failure paths. How often have we heard of a friend who in trying to quit smoking cigarettes cold instead returns to it with an air of defeat? They have denied the flesh, doing what they do not enjoy, in an attempt to achieve their ultimate goal of eliminating a Sin from their life. Is it any surprise that they fail?

This is strategy of my lent. To appease the needs of my body, mind and soul I must engage in easy activities to satisfy them. Yoga shall strengthen my body and peer deeper into my understanding of myself. With the schedule, I have set forth of 3 sessions a week, I have a measurable gauge of my activity for the week. To further my career goals, I will utilize career net, my contacts, and craigslist to get 2 interviews by next week. Further, I will schedule band practices weekly for my band to begin bringing that goal to completion. In order to make all this possible, the foundation of my schoolwork must be in place. I am committing myself to a goal that by the end of February, I will be 2 days ahead of each of my classes scheduled required work. Finally, to achieve the ambitious goals I have for SOLID, I will present my first funding proposal for a trip to a Yankees game by Monday for approval.

With the appropriate steps, these goals are within reach. I shall achieve all of them. I shall will this. Science has proven that at the quantum level, the mere viewing of certain particles by humans can change their nature. Astounding. Even at this primitive level of brain functioning, we can restructure reality and the components of it. So why not do it at a macrolevel? 2000 years ago one man discovered this in 40 days. There is good reason that Lent lasts just as long.